Aussie Commando #5- Special Forces Selection
Kevin talks about getting "Selected" for the Australian Commandos.
"We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school." – Thucydides
Australian Special Forces Selection
The first part of Selection training is a demanding physical test. To be competitive, trainees should finish a 3.2 km run in less than 14 minutes. They also need to do about 100 sit-ups and 100 push-ups in two minutes each and at least two dozen heaves (pull-ups). In my Special Forces screening test, I remember only about one-third of the applicants passing the initial physical test with these high scores.
The surviving trainees entered the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course to become Commandos. The training included running, swimming, and obstacle courses. We spent the entire three weeks doing almost everything wearing heavy packs that weighed between 30 kilograms (65 lbs.) and 41 kilograms (90 lbs.), depending on what we were doing.
We did another physical fitness test at the beginning of the second week of my Selection course. We had to complete a 2.4 km (1.5 miles) obstacle course. We also had to finish a land navigation course over 41 km (26 m) long in less than 48 hours. The rough terrain we covered seemed to be all hills and water. We did the course at night without a flashlight. We had to work alone and couldn't talk to anyone, lugging heavy packs over marathon distances. We had to finish the course no matter what the weather did.
The Selection course tested leadership and teamwork qualities. Trainees "selected" would go on to Commando Continuation Training (CCT).
A Hard Process
Looking back now, over twenty years later, basic and infantry training sucked, but Selection was much harder because it was all based on individual initiative. My entry training taught me how to be a soldier, while Selection was an evaluation to determine the likelihood of becoming a Commando.
The only distinguishing feature on our uniforms was a square piece of orange engineering tape with the candidate's ID number written upon it attached to our arms and legs. No tabs or insignia displayed our rank or any other outward sign distinguishing between enlisted soldiers or officers. My roster number for Selection was "Four-Zero." Every candidate had a chance to shine in the course. Before we arrived, the cadre had given us a precise packing list.
The Barrier Test
After graduating from Infantry Training, I had a week off. I did the barrier test, a brutal physical fitness test, and then we would go onto the three-and-a-half-week Special Forces selection course. If I passed, I would get posted to 4RAR (which stands for the 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, but has since been renamed the 2nd Commando Regiment in 2009).
But even then, you still weren't a Commando. Still, Command posted you to 4RAR's Readiness Enhancement Platoon (REP) for more training, more courses, and the Special Forces Reinforcement (REO) cycle, which is the initial collection of courses that are required to fully qualify you for your Green Beret, even though the training continues.
Alternatively, if I failed any of the Special Forces entry tests at any time, I would be transferred immediately to another conventional unit. I would remain in the Army, but instead of becoming a Commando, I would spend the remainder of my enlistment as a conventional rifleman. I have massive respect for riflemen, but this was never an option for me.
In the barrier test, you do 60 Basic Fitness Assessment push-ups, 100 Basic Fitness Assessment sit-ups, ten heaves (pull-ups), a 3.2-kilometer (two miles) run in patrol order (carrying seven kilograms plus a weapon) in 16 and a half minutes, a four-hour endurance march (carrying 28 kilograms- plus weapon) completing a minimum of 22 kilometers, tread water for two minutes, swim 400 meters in 18 minutes in combat uniform, then do a navigation and weapons test. If I had survived all that, only then would I have earned a spot in the selection course.
Selection
The Selection course is incredibly tough and punishing from day one. It tests a soldier's resilience and ability to think logically in different extreme conditions. During one part of the course, I didn't eat or sleep for 48 hours and carried my pack, webbing, and rifle involving different scenarios. There was a rescue, an intelligence-gathering mission, and exercises to test your ability to think and deliver on your feet without preparation. Our instructors told us they would pick three people from our 12-man section to give a 10-minute talk to the group.
Of course, I was one of the lucky souls. I got picked first and was given the topic on a piece of paper: "What creates good karma?"
Thankfully, I have never had a problem talking in front of people, and what followed were 10 of my best minutes. I started by asking what karma is and what it means and just went from there. It's a blur now as we all hadn't slept for a few days, and precise memories from that time are scratchy. But I'm sure my old man would have been proud of my delivery, especially given that math was my thing, and English and Public Speaking were always my dad's.
We were also taught particular skills and then assessed on our ability to retain the information. We were driven to the point of physical exhaustion and then would have to learn something mental to show we could learn and retain things under duress. Could we think rationally even when we were utterly exhausted? I found out later why you really need that ability.
My survival of four Afghanistan tours is a testament to the selection system's work. But it's hard for anyone to do. Try staying up for two days, then going for a run. After you've gone for a run, do five heaves and ten push-ups every minute on the minute for half an hour, then sit down and try and read a map and complete a complex plan.
War Stories
Throughout Selection, one of the Directing Staff (DS) would gather us around as a group while we did a task and tell us "war stories" about being on a Special Forces team. They talked about being in Somalia in the early 1990s. Another instructor told us a tragic story about treating a small child in some third world no-name country for an illness, only to have the child die in his arms two days later. The instructors relayed maybe half a dozen grim and forbidding stories, always finishing, "Do you guys still want to be a Commando after what I just told you?" We'd all look at each other, not knowing what to say. These adventurous stories made me want to be a Commando even more.
Walking with Cows
The DS told us to sleep a few nights only to be woken up three hours later with the instruction, "Go for a stroll with the Colonel's cows," which involved a 10-kilometer route march with our heavy packs on our backs. During that physical session, instructors would walk around, trying to psych us out: "You think being a Commando is all cherries and lollipops? Do you think you'll get paid $50,000 a year that easily? This shit is exactly what it's going to be like. It's not a job for pretenders." The whole Selection process is about how badly you really want to be a Commando.
Log PT
During Selection, the DS gave us a taste of "Log PT." Log PT is an average telephone pole cut in half. A team of six men picked it up and over onto our shoulders. On our instructor's command, we pressed it over our heads. On another order, we lowered it, and on his following command, we pushed the log overhead for an extended time. We even did sit-ups with the pole cradled in our stomachs. We did everything they told us to do with the log. We were never allowed to drop the pole.
By the second day, log PT got boring for one of our instructors. So, he became downright creative. He had us take the log and jog through the obstacle course as if carrying a wounded comrade. We had to pull, push, or otherwise get the log through a small portion of the obstacle course without dropping it. By the time we finished, we were utterly exhausted and covered with sand and dirt in every conceivable place. We all had smashed our fingers or banged our heads dozens of times on the log. Luckily, nothing too serious.
I remember lying in the middle of one of the obstacles, tugging and heaving on one end of the log, and my teammates pushed on the other. We all decided that our sadistic instructor's parents abused him as a child. Some pretty funny ideas of how that happened kept us all laughing through that miserable afternoon.
Almost Quit
Over the years, several young men have died in Special Forces training simply because the instructors were intent on having the new volunteers experience the same brutal training that they had to endure in their time. A few years ago, for example, a trainee died from severe dehydration.
Military hearings were held, the authorities meted out jail sentences to the instructors and commanders, and the Special Forces were required to scale back the level of abuse the instructors were allowed to engage in. It wasn't always the instructors' fault. More often than not, our motivation to succeed drove us to take chances we shouldn't have. And sometimes, it was hard to tell who was to blame. At some point during Selection, everyone was near the edge, hanging on by a thread, on the verge of breaking down physically and mentally.
War Week
I lost my composure once in the field, and I thought that was the end of the line for me, that I was about to be shipped out to some random conventional infantry unit to finish my enlistment. Every guy in the 2nd Commando Regiment has a similar story to tell. For me, it happened during what's called "War Week," close to the end of Selection, during which the instructors took us out into the field for the closest possible simulation of wartime conditions.
We lived in a trench for several days, wearing the same uniform all week: the same stinking underwear, socks, and boots. By the second or third day, we were not only miserable, but we started to get delirious from almost three weeks of lack of sleep.
The only good thing I'd discovered in the military so far was a newfound appreciation for sleep. The tough training actually retrained your body to maximize whatever sleep you get. When I sacked out for five hours, my eyes closed for 300 minutes. No tossing and turning, no waking up in the middle of the night to piss—I don't even remember dreaming once while I was in the Army. I would close my eyes at lights out and, boom, open them at reveille.
Later, during a Commando REO cycle, we'd train mercilessly for three weeks solid, then get a single weekend leave. Everyone headed home to sleep for twenty-six or twenty-seven hours, straight hours. My body completely shut down, experiencing a short-term hibernation to recharge its battery after all that sprinting, forced marches, and shooting. Eventually, my body adjusted to the tempo, and I could function for about four days without sleep. But that habit took a long time to learn.
Sleep deprivation was one of the hardest aspects of Army life, and it peaked during Selection's War Week. Legally, the instructors were only required to give us three or four hours of sleep a night. You get buggy, almost hallucinatory, especially in hot weather. We were putting in twenty-hour days, digging holes and practicing combat maneuvers while wearing heavy packs—nonstop movement- during which any fuckup our instructors punished by making us run up hills or do sit-ups or push-ups until our muscles screamed for mercy.
They constantly moved us around from place to place. We'd spend twelve hours in one camp, sleeping perhaps two, then get a mission and train ferociously for eighteen hours, then move to another camp and sleep for another hour. The Australian Army knows that sleep deprivation is dangerous territory, so they tripled the number of instructors per platoon to keep a closer eye on us.
By day four of War Week, we were all getting delusional. I felt like I was tripping on LSD or had drunk a case of beer: there's a point where sleeplessness leads to a disembodied, floating euphoria when you start seeing visions, oversized lizards, and biblical ghosts in the desert shadows. That day, in the middle of an instructional lecture, our sergeant stooped down, plucked something from the ground, and started waxing philosophical.
"This is interesting," he said. "Does anyone know what this is? Does anyone know what species of flower I'm holding?"
My God! It was such a random comment, muttering about some tiny pink desert flower growing in the middle of nowhere. No one in the platoon had a clue what he was talking about. Then he raised his voice sternly to a command.
"There are twenty guys here! Someone should be able to figure out what kind of flower this is."
There was some murmuring in the ranks, but still, no one could come up with an answer.
"If I don't start hearing answers in the next ten seconds, then this platoon is going to pick up every single flower in the entire region," he shouted.
The sergeant must have caught something in my expression because, in the next instant, he was pointing his long index finger directly at me.
"Candidate Four-Zero, you look like you have something to say. Can you tell me what type of flower this is?"
I stared at him in pure defiance and mumbled something unintelligible. "Who gives a fuck what type of flower this is? We haven't slept in four days!"
"Candidate Four-Zero?" he said in a mocking whisper. "What happened? Did you lose your mind?"
Suddenly, all the instructors converged on me, surrounding me like white blood cells forming around an infection. They were all in my face, gazing intently, hovering, ready to strike, waiting for me to give them the pretext to kick me out of the unit.
And the recruits next to me were whispering: "Spider, shut the fuck up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Don't talk back."
I was on the borderline. I felt so close to cracking, smelling the instructor's hot, angry breath on my face. I was ready to tell them to go fuck themselves and send me off to whatever infantry battalion they saw fit. But then I pulled it together, breathing deeply, reminding myself how badly I wanted to succeed, to make it into the ranks of a Special Forces unit.
I've since run similar training exercises; I know today what the instructor was doing. He didn't give a damn about the name of the flower. Being an elite Australian Special Forces soldier is not about being the fastest runner or the straightest shooter.
The sole purpose of the flower-naming exercise was to add more stress, annoyance, and harassment to see if this minor and inconsequential task would be the straw that broke one of our backs- that entire week of hell taught us to work as a unit under high emotional pressure, with practically no sleep, while performing various tasks in timed intervals. It's as close as they can come to simulating the stress and strain of wartime conditions.
The screaming instructors took me out of formation, led me to a hill, and ordered me to start crawling. I crawled over rocky, thorny desert terrain for what felt like hours, but it was probably only a few minutes. I still have the scars on my forearms to prove it.
Giving It My Best
Other than the "Flower Episode," I never really reached a breaking point. I viewed everything as a test, so while I knew it would be hard, I just had to keep doing it. Rather than feeling broken, I felt like I knew what I could handle and that I'd give it my best. Could they ask for anything more? I thought about the type of guy I'd like to have by my side. That guy is about to fall over and still walking forward.
Having gotten to this training stage, I knew we all had the aptitude to do it. Now, it was about being the person who doesn't break. I couldn't stop and think about it. I had to get it done. I went into Selection with no preconceived ideas and expected it would be tough. I needed to be ready for everything and anything and be prepared to roll with the punches. It was a good approach to have. I kept saying to myself, "Come on, just keep going, just keep going, just keep going."
Final Evolution
The final team event had us back at the Special Forces Training Center late morning on the second to last day, exhausted beyond measure. It was almost our last physical evolution of Selection.
After securing the materials from our last team event, the cadre sent my Selection class to the classroom, where we conducted a peer review of our team members. With the peers' input, each candidate had in his training record an evaluation of how the cadre rated his performance in the team events and how his teammates rated him.
There was also a cadre debriefing. A cadre sergeant sat one-on-one with each man for ten or fifteen minutes and discussed our performance. My instructor told me where I did well, where, in his estimation, I came up short, and how I might improve my performance if I got selected. And finally, after a hot meal and shower, we were allowed some rest. Those who performed well would eventually be selected for continuation in Special Forces training. Those who did not perform or test well would have their training record examined by the commander's review board.
Early on our final morning, we were up at 0300 for our last physical evolution — a thirty-one-kilometer (20-mile) ruck march with a 27-kilogram (60 lbs.) pack. There was no time limit, but we were expected to complete the march in twelve hours or less. All but two classmates finished, and we nearly sleepwalked as we returned to our barracks.
I had mates who got two weeks through that three-week selection course and then got injured. It was tough. Put simply, after doing it once, I would hate to do it again. Even though a lot has happened since that day, I can vividly remember the last day of that course.
We had washed our gear and officially finished everything, but we still needed to find out if we'd made it. There was a formal briefing where we would find out.
Getting Selected
Everyone went to the classroom, and the Selection panel sat up front. The cadre gave a little spiel before they read roster numbers from a list. The instructors called those candidates and told them they had been selected and were asked to leave the room. The instructors didn't call my number. There were about 25 guys left in the room, but the cadre had asked a lot more to leave.
I looked around the room and tried to figure out what might happen. I knew some things in training had gone wrong for a few of the group members left around me and that there were other things I could have done better. But the reality was something went wrong for everyone at some stage. No one in that room thought they had made it yet.
At that stage, the Selection course had beaten most of the confidence out of me. I was struggling to survive. It's true that I had to be confident in everything I did, but I started to ask myself, did I do enough to earn a spot here?
A man called Hans Fleer stood in front of us. He went on to become Honorary Colonel of the 2nd Commando Regiment and liked walking with his "cows" at four in the morning. We were ready to get the news, and Fleer stood there with a perfect steely face and started speaking: "So far, over the last three weeks, you've been through this, this, this, and this ..." He gave it a real build-up, before saying, "In this room, I am proud to say, you men are the exact type of men we are looking for to enter the role of the Special Forces."
Wow. I felt exhausted euphoria followed by shock. But I was actually thinking about the guys outside. I knew how many of them were out there, and I had spent a lot of close, intimate time with many of them, but they hadn't made it. The good part was that Axe (another Kapooka nickname for being built like a battle axe) and Changi (appropriately named because he looked like he had just left the World War II prisoner-of-war camp with the same name) were still in the room with me. These were guys I had grown close to over the past few weeks. Even though they were in a different section, seeing them succeed gave me an extra bit of oomph.
Mates
Mates are a really huge thing in the Army. Getting through the Special Forces Selection Course is only possible with guys around you driving you. We would feed off each other's energy when we felt weak because everyone had moments near their breaking point. At that moment, you look at the guy next to you and think, I'm doing it for them just as much as I'm doing it for myself. It's a weird mentality, and it's hard to describe to people who haven't been through it. But it explains why, at a time I should have been over the moon, I couldn't stop thinking about who hadn't made it.
When I walked out of there, it was the first time in three and a half weeks that I could turn my phone on, and the messages started to pour in. People were wishing me luck, asking how it was going, and so forth. I rang our home phone at Gladstone Park, and my mother answered. I didn't have much time, so I simply said, "Mum, I made it. I got through. It's just happened, and it's amazing." She was naturally pretty excited, but it was a short conversation. I was still exhausted and just so relieved it was over.
In the weeks after, when I visited home, I saw Dad and could see how happy he was when he shook my hand. He had a big grin. I felt like I had finally given him something to be proud of. I had never seen him as enthusiastic as when he shook my hand that day.
So, as you can see, there was a long, long way to go. But right then, I was thinking a little bit ahead. I was just happy and proud that I had got this far.